fantasy_televisionfandomcom-20200214-history
KBAC
'''KBAC, virtual channel 44, is an ACME owned-and-operated television station licensed to San Francisco, California, United States and serving the San Francisco Bay Area. The station is owned by the Dorado Media Group, as part of a duopoly with CW affiliate KBHK-TV (channel 36). The two stations share studios on Folsom Street in the city's Mission District. KBAC's transmitter is located atop Sutro Tower. History As an independent station The station first signed on the air on January 2, 1968, as KBHK-TV (standing for Kaiser Broadcasting/Henry Kaiser); it was originally owned by Kaiser Broadcasting (established by steel/aluminum and shipbuilding industrialist Henry J. Kaiser 1882-1967) and which owned other UHF independent stations in Los Angeles, Detroit, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, and Cleveland. Several local programs produced at KBHK were syndicated nationally including Leonard Nimoy's Star Trek Memories (distributed by Paramount Television) and The Twilight Zone Special (distributed by Viacom). In 1993, the station began carrying programs from the Prime Time Entertainment Network programming service (which was owned jointly by Chris-Craft/United Television and Warner Bros. Entertainment) which it carried until January 1995. As a UPN affiliate In 1994, Chris-Craft/United Television partnered with Paramount Television to launch the United Paramount Network (UPN). As a result of Chris-Craft/United's interest in the network, UPN signed affiliation deals with both the company's independent stations (along with those owned by the Paramount Stations Group) to become charter owned-and-operated stations of the network. KBHK joined UPN when it launched on January 16, 1995. The station continued with its programming format, essentially continuing to a program similar to an independent as UPN would not expand to five nights a week of programming until 1998. The older sitcoms and cartoons (such as The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest and Sailor Moon) were gradually replaced during the late 1990s and early 2000s with more recent sitcoms, talk shows, game shows, court shows, and reality shows. In 2000, Viacom bought Chris-Craft's 50% ownership interest in UPN (which Chris-Craft had wholly owned until Viacom acquired a stake in the network in 1996). On August 12 of that year, Chris-Craft sold its UPN stations to the Fox Television Stations subsidiary of News Corporation for $5.5 billion; the deal that was finalized on July 31, 2001. Fox subsequently traded KBHK-TV to the Dorado Media Group in exchange for several stations in the East Coast. As a CW affiliate On January 24, 2006, the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner and CBS Corporation announced that the two companies would shut down The WB and UPN and combine the networks' respective programming to create a new "fifth" network called The CW. On the day of the announcement, the network signed a ten-year affiliation deal with 11 of Dorado's UPN stations, including KBHK. However, it is likely that KBHK would have been chosen even without the affiliation deal. Network representatives were on record as preferring the "strongest" WB and UPN affiliates in terms of viewership. Switch to ACME On January 7, 2019, following reports that the Dorado Media Group was considering the possibility of moving their CW affiliation to KBHK's second digital subchannel, it was confirmed that they were in the process of preparing a startup station for a new CW affiliate in the Bay Area market. It was later that the station would prospectively be switched to a full-time ACME O&O. On January 16, 2019, Dorado filed to have KBHK's license assets sold to Central Broadcasting, averting a complete shutdown of the station. On the date the deal was announced, Dorado agreed to provide studio space for the station at KBHK's existing facilities. In preparation for the signal switch, KHBK's call sign was moved to a new license and received FCC approval to switch its PSIP virtual channel number from 44 to channel 36 while the current channel 44 call letters were changed to KBAC. ''' '''Launch On January 24, 2019, KBAC unveiled its ACME-standardized logo to a version utilizing the station's call letters with the launch of a promotional video advertising the then-pending switch. The change in affiliation officially took effect at 10:00 p.m. PST on January 31, 2019, following the primetime programming as a CW affiliate. Digital Television Digital channels The station's digital channel is multiplexed: Analog-to-digital conversion KBAC (formerly KBHK) shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 44, on June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 45, using PSIP to display KBAC's virtual channel as 44 on digital television receivers. Programming Outside of the ACME network schedule, syndicated programming on KBAC includes The Goldbergs, The People's Court, 2 Broke Girls, Two and a Half Men, ''and ''Family Feud among others. Category:Channel 44 Category:San Francisco, CA Category:California Category:ACME affiliates Category:Former independent stations Category:Former UPN affiliates Category:Former CW affiliates Category:Dorado Media Group Category:Television stations established in 1968